The initial release of the community project was a beta version of SUSE Linux 10.0. The current stable release is openSUSE Leap 15.0. The community project offers a rolling release version called openSUSE Tumbleweed, which is continuously updated with tested, stable packages. This is based on the rolling development code base called "Factory". Other tools and applications associated with the openSUSE project are YaST, Open Build Service, openQA, Snapper, Machinery, Portus and Kiwi.

Novell created openSUSE after purchasing SuSE Linux AG[6] for US$210 million on 4 November 2003. The Attachmate Group acquired Novell and split Novell and SUSE into two autonomous subsidiary companies. After The Attachmate Group merged with Micro Focus in November 2014, SUSE became its own business unit.[7]

Beyond the distributions and tools, the openSUSE Project provides a web portal for community involvement. The community develops openSUSE collaboratively with its corporate sponsors through the Open Build Service, openQA, writing documentation, designing artwork, fostering discussions on open mailing lists and in Internet Relay Chat channels, and improving the openSUSE site through its wiki interface. openSUSE offers a stable base with its openSUSE Leap version. Users that prefer more up-to-date free software can use its rolling release distribution Tumbleweed. Users can also use the Open Build Service. Moreover, the flexibility of openSUSE makes it easy to re-purpose for specific goals like running a web- or mail server.[8]

SuSE Linux 7.1, released January 24, 2001, with the older KDE 1.1.2 desktop.

In the past, the SUSE Linux company had focused on releasing the SUSE Linux Personal and SUSE Linux Professional box sets which included extensive printed documentation that was available for sale in retail stores. The company's ability to sell an open source product was largely due to the closed-source development process used. Although SUSE Linux had always been free software product licensed with the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), it was only freely possible to retrieve the source code of the next release 2 months after it was ready for purchase. SUSE Linux' strategy was to create a technically superior Linux distribution with the large number of employed engineers, that would make users willing to pay for their distribution in retail stores.[9]

Since the acquisition by Novell in 2003 and with the advent of openSUSE, this has been reversed: starting with version 9.2, an unsupported one-DVD ISO image of SUSE Professional was made available for download, as well as a bootable Live DVD evaluation. The FTP server continues to operate and has the advantage of "streamlined" installs, permitting the user to download only the packages the user feels they need. The ISO has the advantages of an easy install package, the ability to operate even if the user's network card does not work "out of the box", and less experience needed (i.e., an inexperienced Linux user may not know whether or not to install a certain package, and the ISO offers several preselected sets of packages).

SUSE Linux 10.0, released October 6, 2005, was the first release of the openSUSE Project

The initial stable release from the openSUSE Project, SUSE Linux 10.0, was available for download just before the retail release of SUSE Linux 10.0. In addition, Novell discontinued the Personal version, renaming the Professional version to simply "SUSE Linux", and repricing "SUSE Linux" to about the same as the old Personal version. As of version 10.2, the SUSE Linux distribution was officially renamed to openSUSE.[10][11]

Over the years, SuSE Linux has gone from a status of a distribution with restrictive, delayed publications (2 months of waiting for those who had not bought the box, without ISOs available, but installation available via FTP) and a closed development model to a free distribution model with immediate and freely availability for all and transparent and open development.[12]

On April 27, 2011, Attachmate completed its acquisition of Novell. Attachmate split Novell into two autonomous business units, Novell and SUSE. Attachmate made no changes to the relationship between SUSE (formerly Novell) and the openSUSE project. After the 2014 merger of the Attachmate Group with Micro Focus, SUSE reaffirmed their commitment to openSUSE.[13]

EQT Partners announced their intent to acquire SUSE on July 2, 2018. There are no expected changes in the relationship between SUSE and the openSUSE. This pending acquisition will be the third acquisition of SUSE Linux since the founding of the openSUSE Project. [14]

OpenSUSE is fully and freely available for immediate download, and is also sold in retail box to the general public. It comes in several editions for the x86 and x86-64 architectures (as for version 13.1):

openSUSE Download Edition: This is the freely downloadable ISO version, available from the openSUSE downloads page. It is available as a Live-CD version (KDE Plasma or GNOME) which can be installed on the hard disk, or as a more complete single layer DVD-5. A CD containing additional proprietary software and an additional CD containing files for internationalization (less common languages) are also available. This version does not include any technical assistance, nor printed manuals.

openSUSE Retail Edition or openSUSE Box: Users are able to purchase a German version of the openSUSE box. The box is delivered with printed documentation. There is no official English version of the Retail box.

openSUSE FTP: There is also a small ISO to install openSUSE directly from FTP (network install). There are mirrors on the two different FTP trees: one for open-source packages (OSS), a second for non-open-source packages or whose license is restrictive (non-oss). The FTP can be used to complement the Download and Retail editions.

openSUSE Factory: This is the continuous ongoing development version, from which the development team take out regular snapshots (Milestones and RC) to get the stable openSUSE. This is also the source from which stabilized packages are provided for openSUSE Tumbleweed (see below) as of 2014-Nov-04.[15]

openSUSE Tumbleweed: Rolling release, in which new stable versions of packages are made available as soon as they are stabilized from Factory.

openSUSE Factory and Tumbleweed merge: In 2014 the development model of Factory was such that it in effect became a rolling release. Therefore, with the release of openSUSE 13.2, Tumbleweed and Factory merge.

SUSE includes an installation and administration program called YaST ("Yet another Setup Tool") which handles hard disk partitioning, system setup, RPM package management, online updates, network and firewall configuration, user administration and more in an integrated interface. In more recent times,[when?] many more YaST modules have been added, including one for Bluetooth support. It also controls all software applications. SaX2 was once integrated into YaST to change monitor settings, however with openSUSE 11.3 SaX2 has been removed.

ZYpp (or libzypp) is a Linux software management engine which has a powerful dependency resolver and a convenient package management API. ZYpp is the backend for zypper, the default command line package management tool for openSUSE.

The Open Build Service provides software developers with a tool to compile, release and publish their software for many distributions, including Mandriva, Ubuntu, Fedora and Debian. It typically simplifies the packaging process, so developers can more easily package a single program for many distributions, and many openSUSE releases, making more packages available to users regardless of what distribution version they use. It is published under the GNU GPLv2+.[16]

By default, OpenSUSE uses Delta RPMs when updating an installation. A Delta RPM contains the difference between an old and new version of a package. This means that only the changes, between the installed package and the new one, are downloaded. This reduces bandwidth consumption and update time, which is especially important on slow Internet connections.

On January 2, 2006, SUSE developer David Reveman announced Xgl, an X server architecture designed to take advantage of modern graphics cards via their OpenGL drivers, layered on top of OpenGL via glitz. Compiz, one of the first compositing window managers for the X Window System that is able to take advantage of this OpenGL acceleration, was also released.

SUSE was a leading contributor to the KDE project for many years. SUSE’s contributions in this area have been very wide-ranging, and affecting many parts of KDE such as kdelibs and KDEBase, Kontact, and kdenetwork. Other notable projects include: KNetworkManager – a front-end to NetworkManager[17] and Kickoff – a new K menu for KDE Plasma Desktop.[18]

Since openSUSE 42.1, the default Plasma 5 desktop for openSUSE has used the traditional cascading Application Menu in place of the default Kickoff-like Application Launcher menu. The openSUSE Leap KDE experience is built on long term support versions of KDE Plasma, starting with openSUSE Leap 42.2[19].

The Ximian group became part of Novell, and in turn made and continued several contributions to GNOME with applications such as F-Spot, Evolution and Banshee.
The GNOME desktop used the slab instead of the classic double-panelled GNOME menu bars from openSUSE 10.2 to openSUSE 11.4. In openSUSE 12.1 slab was replaced with the upstream GNOME Shell and GNOME Fallback designs.

Starting with openSUSE Leap 15.0, GNOME's Wayland (display server protocol) implementation is offered as the default GNOME experience.[20] GNOME Classic, GNOME on Xorg, and the GNOME SLE desktops are offered as alternatives to the more upstream Wayland-based experience.

openSUSE Leap 15.0 with the "SLE Classic" option selected at login time

The Factory project is the rolling development code base for openSUSE Tumbleweed,[21] a Linux distribution. Factory is mainly used as an internal term for openSUSE's distribution developers, and the target project for all contributions to openSUSE's main code base. There is a constant flow of packages going into Factory. There is no freeze; therefore, the Factory repository is not guaranteed to be fully stable and is not intended to be used by humans.

The core system packages receive automated testing via openQA. When automated testing is completed and the repo is in a consistent state, the repo is synced to the download mirrors and published as openSUSE Tumbleweed, which many developers and hackers from the openSUSE Project use as their primary operating system.

From 2009 to 2014, the openSUSE project aimed to release a new version every eight months. Prior to the Leap series, versions 11.2-13.2 were provided with critical updates for two releases plus two months, which resulted in an expected support lifetime of 18 months.[22][23]

Starting with version Leap 42.1 (after version 13.2), each major release is expected to be supported for at least 36 months, until the next major version is available (e.g. 42.1, 15.0), aligned with SUSE Linux Enterprise Releases. Each minor release (e.g. 42.1, 42.2, etc.) is expected to be released annually, aligned with SUSE Linux Enterprise Service Packs, and users are expected to upgrade to the latest minor release within 6 months of its availability, leading to an expected support lifecycle of 18 months as well. Tumbleweed is updated on a rolling basis, and requires no upgrades beyond the regular installation of small updates and snapshots [24]

Evergreen[25] was a community effort to prolong maintenance of selected openSUSE versions after they reach official end-of-life before the Leap series.